UK is in the Premier League for homelessness in big cities
TRAVELLING around Britain’s cities on the party conference circuit gives you glimpse of how the world outside the spinning top of planet London is getting on with life.
Birmingham, Britain’s truly multi-cultural city, felt relaxed with itself as it always does.
Brighton seems to have picked itself up from the shabbiness of a few years ago.
I’m always struck by the glitzy Premier League economy that has grown up around Liverpool and Manchester, where the rub off from the multi-billion pound football industry (can we call it a sport any more?) can be seen all around.
Fast cars, even faster restaurants and bars, cater to the players with more cash than a kitchen porter will see in a lifetime – and to the men and women who are part of the entourage following the glorious game. Those exiled fans who travel back to the cities each fortnight and want to be seen to be keeping up with the bling of it all bolster the hotel and that entertainment economy.
For all of Glasgow’s self-conscious attachment to fashion and celebrity, that level of conspicuous wealth is absent from the city and will be so long as the Old Firm stay outside the golden circle of football. Maybe that’s a good thing.
What all the conference cities have in common, of course, is homelessness, the flipside of divided Britain.
In Manchester, on Saturday at tea-time, the queue for the homeless hostel on Oldham Street was longer than the one to get served in the pub next door.
Every city centre doorway was a spot for a weary sleeping bag. This is a crisis not just caused by a lack of houses.
Homelessness in the UK has more than doubled since 2011 because of the impact of the Government’s welfare reforms.
According to Polly Neate, from the housing charity Shelter, unless benefits caps are reversed, the country will see “absolutely unacceptable levels of destitution”. It feels like we’re already there.